AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



February 



stings." I then proceeded to ex- 

 pound at length the theory of a 

 bee's flight — how it rises straight in 

 the air above all impediments, be- 

 fore it strikes out to pasture, and 

 how absolute safety depended only 



A BRANCH OF ACACIA BLOOM 

 (Photograph by John R. Douglass). 



on the height of the fence. I watched 

 the effect from the tail of my eye. 

 He was growing visibly calmer. The 

 prospect of a half-payment on a 

 fence that would leave the strawber- 

 ry patch on my side of it, had 

 worked the magic. His wife, too, was 

 deeply impressed. She presented 

 me with a jar of strawberry pre- 

 serves, casually remarking that 

 fences, particularly high board 

 fences, were out of date and no 

 longer used in connection with mod- 

 ern homes. 



Early next morning I was awak- 

 ened by a sharp metallic sound. 



"The milkman," I murmured, and 

 turned over for another snooze. 



Again the sound came — a stealthy, 

 scraping sound. I stole to the win- 

 dow. In the half-light I perceived a 

 dim form that now and then cast 

 furtive glances in the direction of 

 our hives. It was my neighbor. He 

 was hoeing the unfinished rows of 

 si ra wherries. 



Bees in Combless Packages 



By the Editor 



THE irregular results in crops 

 ted from packages of 

 In i s by the pound, received 

 from the South, when they have ar- 

 rived in good order and have been 

 hived on empty combs, are 

 mainly dependent upon the time at 

 which thej are received, when com- 

 pai ''I in the honey flow. 



The results obtained in honey by the 

 purchase of such small swarms as 

 one pound o unds of bees. 



often do n< it come from thesi bi 



; , but from the great increase 

 in hive force secured from the queens 

 themselves, by active egg laying. 

 Whether we rear bees at home for 



the honey crop, or whether we order 

 them from far away, we must bear 

 in mind that it takes 21 days to 

 hatch a worker from the egg, and 

 that it usually takes about 14 days 

 more before that worker becomes an 

 active field bee. So the actual 

 amount of time necessary between 

 the laying of the egg by the queen 

 and the harvesting of honey by the 

 bee produced from that egg, is 35 

 days. Let us suppose that our honey 

 crop is usually due to begin on June 

 10. Then the first of our field force 

 must be bred, the eggs must be laid, 

 at least 35 days previously, or about 

 May 6. If the egg-laying does not 

 begin until May 20, the field force will 

 begin its labors only about the end of 

 June. If our crop lasts 6 weeks, 

 nearly half of it will be gone before 

 our bees can throw a sufficient force 

 into the field. 



This explains why countries in the 

 far north usually succeed best with 

 bees by the pound. Often their crop 

 does not begin till the end of June. 

 If they receive their combless pack- 

 ages by the middle of May and put 

 them at once on drawn combs, the 

 queens have at least 10 days in 

 which to lay eggs that will make a 

 working force for the first of the 

 harvest. Queens that lay 3,000 eggs 

 per day will thus furnish some 30,000 

 workers, more or less, at the open- 

 ing of the crop, with additional 

 thousands coming every day follow- 

 ing. 



In some parts of the country there 



are two distinct honey crops, the 

 June crop and the August-September 

 crop, or, as some call it, fall crop. 

 If we secure our bees by the pound 

 early in July, they will be ready for 

 the harvest of the second crop after 

 August 15. A package of bees by the 

 pound secured in the middle of June 

 would begin to hatch its first bees 

 about the 6th of July, during the 

 dearth between the two crops and 

 would breed a large, useless force 

 that would consume honey during 

 the month of July without being of 

 any use as field workers till six 

 weeks later. 



As bees live only about 45 days on 

 the average, it is as necessary that 

 we should not breed them too early 

 as to rear them too late. As a mat- 

 ter of course, we need bees during 

 the entire summer and a colony that 

 would entirely stop breeding at any 

 time would soon dwindle in numbers. 

 Rut the beginning of the active egg- 

 laying should come from 45 to 50 

 days before the opening of the pros- 

 pective crop, so as to have the bees 

 of 10 to 15 days of laying when the 

 crop opens, with an increasing force 

 after that, until the combs begin to 

 be well filled with honey, when the 

 laying perforce decreases for want 

 of room for the queen to lay. 



So it is of importance for the api- 

 arist to be well acquainted with his 

 locality and its bloom and also to 

 keep informed on the earliness or 

 lateness of the season, since seasons 

 vary considerably. 



I.ool AT BLOSSOM IN JANUARY 

 (Photograph by Alice Caldwell) 



